Preach.Any game that requires me to “grind” is automatically bushes status. Been playing video games since 93. There’s nothing new under the sun in the video game world. I’m more impressed by casual fun that I can enjoy for as long or as little as I want. I got an extra 30 minutes before bed? Let me enjoy a quick match or two. All that leveling up and putting in hours for dumb shyt like character skins and upgrades.
After getting burnt from Cyberpunk 2077 and seeing the shyt show of AAA titles asking for more money, despite the damn games are damn near 80 dollars. I made a vow to just cop a Macbook, stick to the minor gaming, and saying fukk this money grubbing gaming industry.
Still haven't touched Cyberpunk and won't for another year at the minimum. People sort of fell for the bait on that one, in that CD Projekt Red released the Witcher 2 and 3 in a very shytty state, similar to Cyberpunk and they fixed them up years later. So when the show became popular, people were playing Witcher 3 in its best state, not it's launch state, which made me quit the game on release until they fixed it. They likely wanted to delay the release of Cyberpunk further but they were getting death threats and pressure from fans and their publisher to push it out to release, so the current state of Cyberpunk is what the fans got. I will wait for them to add the promised DLCs and release a complete edition before I touch it. You know they have another Witcher game coming soon, lets hope they don't make their previous mistakes again.
. Haven't played my series x going on a year. 
Never, for me, it's a story medium, simple as that. Playing on the OLED provides and unmatched experience that can't be found through any other medium. But I also space stuff out, so it's ~30 minutes of foreign language, ~30 minutes of reading, 40-60 mins of cycling, ~30 minutes of piano, ~30-60 of studying, not getting in super detail but you get the point. If you are playing hours on end, like I used to, you likely need to look into why you are doing that but there is nothing addicting about games, I could see how someone could get addicted to the gambling currently found in games but I wouldn't say gaming is addicting, it's more time consuming like watching TV all day or surfing the web all day.
With that said, I could never match the stories and experiences that I get from games with anything else, it's a completely different medium that I would never get rid of. That would be like asking me to drop reading or films. But I stick primarily to single player, strategy, roguelikes, and some competitive shooters. During my endless days of gaming it was MOBAs (DOTA 2) and sports games (2k + Madden) making me rage all day and hate life, I'm off of that now. And don't think I don't recognize that profile picture, OP.
edit: Plus I'm heavy into simracing so there definitely won't be any stopping at this point. I think if you put the average person into a decent sim rig, you would have a ton of people making the jump to gaming solely though that. Especially when you combine it with VR.
Example:
". I'm like
shyt is grueling out in these streets especially if you a gamer. 
